


Fortunate Son

by paradisecity



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-05
Updated: 2005-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisecity/pseuds/paradisecity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For George, sometimes ordinary and exceptional mean the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortunate Son

George had never wanted to be a doctor.  
  
He'd always wanted to be a fireman, ever since he was a kid and his mom had explained what the men in the neat red trucks actually did: save people. There was something magical about those two words even at five and George had known from that moment on that he wanted to be a fireman.  
  
He was foiled, however, by something as arbitrary and out of his control as genetics. Halfway through eleventh grade, he'd finally admitted to himself that he simply wasn't going to grow anymore. Save a band of munchkins moving into the neighborhood and lobbying for a fire department of their own, his dreams had, ironically enough, gone up in smoke.  
  
He watched his best friend Tony become a fireman instead. He'd met Tony when they were seven and in first grade, when Tony had asked George if the glue he'd been eating tasted good or if he was just stupid. George had shrugged and offered Tony the bottle. They were best friends after that.  
  
Being friends was usually easy, despite the thing with the school gym, the thing with the car, and the thing with the girl Tony had sworn up, down, and sideways he hadn't known was a hooker. It was easier when Tony's mom died because George's mom had always wanted to be a mother to more kids and Tony was near enough his brother, anyway. It was harder, though, when Tony passed his fireman's exam the summer after graduation and George was fourteen shades of jealous. He was justified, he thought, because Tony would never have wanted to be a fireman if George hadn't always been talking about it. Tony was everything George wasn't, including the kind of son his mom had always wanted, and it wasn't easy watching Tony take his dream, too.  
  
But then George realized that Tony was saving people and only a stupid, paste-eating kid would be jealous of him for that. Actually, Tony already had a history of saving people, starting with saving George from being thrown into more than one garbage can and stuffed into more than one locker at school. Coupled with the fact that he was also the best friend George had never hoped to have, the least he could do was show Tony the kind of loyalty Tony had shown him. And he did.  
  
So George went to college like he'd planned and got himself a new dream, one at which only he could be responsible for failure: he'd go into medicine and save people that way. He worked hard, made the grades, and applied to med school. When he called Tony to tell him he'd gotten in, Tony had laughed proudly, insulted his parentage, and told George he'd always known he was destined for bigger and better things than he himself had ever been.  
  
Tony died the next week saving a family with three kids from the top floor of an apartment building.  
  
George never forgot their last conversation. It was, in fact, the only thing that got him through med school. He quickly found out that failing through no fault of your own was far more preferable to failing when you didn't have anyone else to blame. He wasn't particularly smart, he wasn't particularly talented, and he only stood out because he was so painfully ordinary. Exceptional people became doctors; exceptional people saved lives.  
  
And then he'd remember someone who was exceptional because he was ordinary, someone who saved lives, someone who had, in fact, died doing it. He'd hear a voice in his head saying, "So, what? Does that taste good or are you just stupid?" and George would smile and stick it out for another five minutes, another hour, another day, another semester.

\--------

No one was more surprised than he was when he actually became Dr. O'Malley. Finally, he had what he wanted: a license to save lives. But, in what he was coming to think of as grand O'Malley tradition, he wound up with a license to kill his first day instead. He almost didn't return for his next shift; Dr. Burke had said two of them would walk away and he didn't see any reason to prolong either his agony or theirs.  
  
After all, he didn't have medicine in his blood like Meredith. He didn't have degrees a president could be proud of like Cristina. He didn't have faith in himself like Alex, and he certainly didn't have anything else going for him like Izzie. He was just a kid who wanted to be like his best friend. It was all he'd ever been.  
  
He wasn't sure why he went back for his next shift. Maybe he wanted to make sure Meredith had his number in case she ever needed it. Maybe he wanted to save just one life before he packed in his dream for good. Either way, it was a pipe dream and didn't really matter. What did matter was that, in definite grand O'Malley tradition, he got himself lost before he even made it to the locker room. He found himself on the maternity ward in front of the observation window instead, sleepy faces looking back at him, the faces of brand new people who had no idea who they were, what they were doing, or where they fit in. Just like him.  
  
They were exceptional. Ordinary. Both at the very same time. George turned around, went back to work, and stayed there.

\--------

The last thing he packed when he moved to Meredith's was a picture of him and Tony, taken at the party held in honor of Tony's first week at the station. Two young men smiled back at him, both of whom had lived their dreams of saving people.  
  
The funny thing, George could see now, was that he'd never expected medicine to save him.


End file.
